Cartel (11 page)

"We're up on the target's phone," Cyril said from the rear compartment.

Marcus didn't hear anything through his headset. "Can you turn it on so the rest of us can hear it too, genius?"

"Sorry," Cyril said. "Forgot to flip the switch."

The headsets they used had two earpieces and were du-al-channel. A separate feed could be piped into each ear. Marcus heard Greene's voice in his left ear.

"Is there anything else?" the DEA agent asked. "Besides Estrada?"

"Yes," the woman said.

"What is it?" Greene asked.

There was a long pause. Then the woman said, "Michael had a video."

Oh, shit, Marcus thought. Then he keyed his micro-phone. "One, are you hearing this?"

In his right ear, Marcus heard Gavin say, "We have to get that video."

* * * *

As Scott stared across the table, he could feel his heart beating faster. A video? A video of what? Even if Benny Alvarez was right, and it was the Sinaloa cartel that had killed Mike Cassidy, that still didn't answer the why's of it. Why Cassidy? Why that night? Why so brutal?

Cassidy had been a good agent, but he was only one agent. There were 4,000 more in the DEA alone, and tens of thousands more if you added in all the other U.S. law en-forcement agencies that investigated drug and weapons traf-ficking, like ICE, ATF, the FBI, and the Border Patrol. The men who ran the cartels weren't stupid enough to think that killing one American agent was going to scare the rest of them away. And Cassidy hadn't just been killed. He had been kidnapped and tortured. Whoever did it wanted something from him. But what? Maybe now Scott would find out. "Where is the video?" he asked Benny.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Scott said. "You saw it, didn't you? You saw the video?"

"No. I mean, yes. I saw it, but I didn't see what was on it. I only saw Michael with the video." She touched the bot-tom of her throat. "He had it on a...thing around his neck, a little plastic thing, a..."

"A flash drive?"

She nodded. "Yes, a flash drive. With a...string."

"A lanyard?" Scott suggested.

Benny shrugged to indicate she didn't know the word.

"A cord?" Scott said.

"Sí. Yes. A cord."

A flash drive was good, Scott thought. Because they had never recovered Cassidy's laptop. It was a month after his murder that they finally found his government car. The GPS had been deactivated. A Mexican highway patrol unit discovered it by accident in the desert, a hundred yards off the highway. It had been torched. A lot of Cassidy's personal belongings were still in the car, but not his briefcase or his DEA laptop.

"But you didn't see what was actually on the video?"

"No."

Scott was about to ask her another question when she said, "But he told me what was on it."

He waited for more.

"Michael told me it was taken at a secret meeting in Mexico City," Benny said. "And that what was on it was going to bring down the president of Mexico. And maybe the president of the United States."

Holy shit.

"Where were you when you saw him with the flash drive?"

"At my house," Benny said.

"Did he keep anything there, at your house?"

She nodded. "Toothbrush, razor, deodorant...a suit and a pair of shoes."

"He kept a suit at your house?"

"All the time."

"Mike worked for me and I never saw him wear a tie, much less a suit."

"He loved the theatre."

"Mike Cassidy wore a suit to the movies?"

"Not the movie theatre," Benny said. "Plays. On the stage. We went once a month. His favorites were the Latin dramas. His Spanish was very good, and his...how do you say?...his grammar was better than mine."

"Can we go to your house right now?"

"I've already looked," Benny said. "The flash drive is not there."

"I need to see for myself."

She nodded. "Then we can go and you can look for yourself."

* * * *

"They're moving," Marcus said, watching through bin-oculars as Greene and the woman left the sidewalk table and walked toward the DEA agent's pickup truck. The facial recognition had returned a hit on her, confirming that she was a Policia Federal officer named Benetta Alvarez. Turned out, the Benny Alvarez who Greene was supposed to meet was a woman.

Gavin had kicked the surprising news about the exist-ence of a video recording upstairs to their agency contact, the mysterious Mr. Jones. And now the mission parameters had changed. They were no longer on a surveillance opera-tion; they were on an asset recovery operation, and the asset was the video.

"Together or separate?" Gavin asked over the team's en-crypted radio network.

"Both getting into Tango One's truck," Marcus an-swered, still watching through the binoculars as Greene, ap-parently quite the gentleman, held the door open for Alvarez as she climbed into the passenger seat.

A minute later Marcus was following the pickup truck away from the café. "Targets headed north on Antonio Me-dina," Marcus said.

"Copy," Gavin said. "I'm one block east of you."

Benny Alvarez lived ten minutes from the café and had rid-den a city bus to the meeting. Scott drove her home and parked his truck across the street. The house was small and surrounded by a low cinderblock wall. Only one light shone inside the house.

Scott followed Benny through the front door. She switched on more lights. The house was tiny by American standards, and the furniture was worn, but everything was clean and felt very livable. Benny led him down a short hallway, past a couple of closed doors, to a bedroom at the end. A full-size bed and a dresser took up almost all the space in the little room. Benny pulled open the top drawer of the dresser and took out a zippered leather Dopp kit, which she laid on the scarred wooden dresser. "This was Michael's."

Scott opened the leather kit and removed the contents one item at a time and set them on the dresser: a can of shav-ing cream; an old-fashioned safety razor, the kind with a twist handle and a drop-in double-edged blade-the exact same kind Scott's grandfather used to shave with; a stick of deodorant; a tin of lip balm; a pair of nail clippers...and a package of condoms.

Scott felt himself blush.

Benny shrugged. "You wanted to see everything."

Trying to tamp down his embarrassment, Scott turned the empty Dopp kit over and shook it. Nothing fell out. He probed the inside with his fingers and didn't feel anything unusual beneath the satin liner. He glanced at Benny. "You mentioned a suit."

"In here," she said, then opened a narrow door on the other side of the bed and exposed a small closet. Shoving her own hanging clothes aside, she removed a man's black suit, white shirt, and black silk tie from the end of the rod. She laid them on the bed. Scott went over them inch by inch, pockets, seams, collars, cuffs. He found nothing. "And his shoes?" he said.

Benny pulled a pair of black men's dress shoes from the floor of the closet and set them on the blanket that was spread tight over the bed. A balled-up black sock was stuck in each shoe. This time it was Benny who looked embar-rassed. "I told him I didn't mind washing them for him," she said. "But he insisted on wearing them twice so I didn't have to wash as often."

Scott shook the socks out. There was nothing in them. He shook the shoes and didn't feel anything else hidden in-side them. He pulled the insole out of one shoe and reached his hand toward the toe as far as it would go. Nothing. He set the shoe back on the bed. As he picked up the other shoe he felt his hope fading. He pulled out the insole and laid it on the bed. Again, he searched the inside of the shoe and found nothing. It was only when he picked up the insole to put it back inside the shoe that he noticed the extra weight. He turned the insole over in his hand.

A square of gray duct tape was stuck to the underside of the insole, where the arch of the foot would rest. Scott peeled off the tape. A key fell onto the bed. Benny glanced at Scott, her eyes wide. They both stared at the key.

Scott picked it up. It was made of brass and looked official. The letters "S.P.M." were engraved on the large round head. He looked at Benny. "What's S.P.M.?"

"Servicio Postal Mexicano," Benny said. "The Mexican Postal Service. That's the key to a post office box. I have one just like it."

Scott turned the key over. "There's no box number."

"They don't have box numbers. In case you lose the key or it gets stolen."

"Can we find out what box this key fits?"

"I'm not sure," Benny said. "Maybe it's the same post office I use."

"But we don't know the box number."

"It's a small post office and the boxes are in the lobby."

Scott glanced at his watch. It was 10:40 p.m. "Is it open?"

"The office is closed," Benny said. "But the lobby is al-ways open."

"Show me," he said.

She nodded.

* * * *

Marcus keyed his headset and said, "They're on the move again."

Almost immediately, Gavin's voice came back in his right ear. "They're really going to a post office at this time of night?"

"That's what I copied."

"Which one?"

"Unknown, sir."

"Follow them," Gavin said. "If they recover anything that looks like it might contain a video recording, take it from them."

"Roger that," Marcus said. "Sierra Two out." He heard two quick clicks in reply.

* * * *

"Turn here," Benny said.

Scott took a right on Calle Venezuela, a two-lane street that ran one-way eastbound. "How do you know he used the same post office as you?"

"I don't know," Benny said. "But he drove me there sometimes to pick up my mail. If he was looking to rent a post office box I think he would use the same one. Michael was-how do you say?-an animal of routine."

"A creature of habit," Scott said.

She nodded. "A creature of habit. That's what Michael was. Once he found something he liked, he stuck with it."

Glancing at her, Scott said, "Like you?"

Benny smiled. "Yes, like me."

They kept driving east on Calle Venezuela until they crossed over the train tracks between Amando Nervo and Calle Esteban Baca Calderon.

"Up there on the right," Benny said.

Scott drove one block past the small post office and turned right onto a side street even though there had been room to park in front of the building.

"What are you doing?" Benny said.

Scott glided to the curb at the end of the block and killed the engine. "Being paranoid."

Benny reached for the door handle, but Scott laid a hand on her arm. "Just a minute."

She gave him a concerned look. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just want to make sure we're alone."

"I told you," she said, "the post office is closed. Only the lobby is open."

"I'm not worried about people picking up their mail."

"What then?"

"Just a feeling," Scott said.

"That someone is following us?"

Scott checked the rearview and sideview mirrors. He saw cars passing on Calle Venezuela, but it looked to him like regular traffic. "Like I said, I'm just being paranoid. The only people who even know I'm down here are Glenn Peter-son and my wife."

"And you trust them both, right?"

That was an interesting question, Scott thought, particu-larly in regards to Victoria. "Yes," was all he said.

"Then you are being paranoid. Come on." Benny opened the passenger door. "A friend is watching my daugh-ter, so I can't stay out all night."

"You didn't mention you had a daughter."

Benny climbed out. "Why would I? We just met."

Scott got out and joined her on the narrow, cracked sidewalk. "How old is she?"

"Why?" Benny asked. "Are you trying to figure out if she's Michael's daughter?"

Embarrassed because that was exactly what he was try-ing to find out, Scott said, "No. I was just...making conversation."

They walked up the street toward the post office.

"She's seven," Benny said. "Her name is Rosalita. After my husband's mother."

Feeling like an idiot and unable to come up with any-thing better, Scott said, "That's a pretty name."

"Michael and I were together for two years."

"How did he and Rosalita get along?"

"She loved him."

Scott wondered if the feeling was mutual. Then, as if reading his mind, Benny said, "And he loved her too."

"Did you two ever talk about...?"

"Living together?" Benny said. "On the same side of the river?"

"Yes."

"Sometimes. But it was...What's that word Americans use when they can't explain something?"

"Complicated?"

Benny nodded. "Yes, it was complicated."

They reached the corner. The post office faced Calle Venezuela. Every few seconds a car passed. Scott scanned the street both ways. There didn't seem to be anything suspi-cious. He pulled open the glass door to the post office and they stepped inside.

The back wall of the outer lobby was lined with num-bered post office boxes. Eight rows of twelve boxes each. Ninety-six boxes. Scott figured ten minutes to try the key in all of them. Less than that if he found the right box.

A glass door protected by iron bars stood at the back of the lobby and led to the main part of the post office. A sign hanging inside the glass read CERRADO. Beyond the door the post office was dark.

"How can I help?" Benny asked.

"Keep watch," Scott said. Then he walked up to the bank of post office boxes and pushed the key into the lock of the first box on the top row. The key wouldn't turn. He pulled it out and shoved it into the keyhole of the next box. Again, it wouldn't turn.

"How can I help?" Marcus heard Benny Alvarez ask through the left channel of his headset. "Keep watch," Scott Greene answered.

Marcus had a good spot, two blocks past the post office on Calle Venezuela, on the same side of the street and facing away from it. Several cars were parked between the Subur-ban and the post office. He couldn't see the building in either of his sideview mirrors, which meant that someone standing in front of the post office couldn't see much of the Suburban. But the Suburban had a periscoping camera that swiveled 360 degrees and could see over the line of shitbox Mexi-mobiles lining the street.